The beer bottle was getting empty now and not many were left from when he smashed them against the wall. Everyone in this goddamn town hates him, secretly wishing he were dead. He could tell just by the looks in their eyes. They all hate him.

He set the bottle onto the jagged, candy-coated tile and rested his eyes. He hasn't had much sleep in the past few days. Perhaps he could forget about her, the girl next door; however, of course, all he would dream of was of her and her illustrious face. He swears it is one of an angel. She was the nicest girl the world would ever know and he took her away from them. He left her to die.

She was the perfect, stereotypical girl next door. She was beautiful, funny, caring. The kind of girl that you never knew you truly loved until it hit you like a bullet to the brain.

They were best friends then. God, it was only a month ago. She and the girls were there when him and the guys had showed up. Football practice had run late again. Coach was always up their asses about etiquette and proper lifestyles. Fuck, if he knew what they were doing later that night, no doubt they would've been kicked off the team. He remembered it being so hard to step off that field, away from him, every night. It was like Coach had known all along of the after-game parties they had called their own. He guessed it wasn't too inconspicuous. Teenagers drank, it wasn't some wild idea that they had just started. Coach was smart enough to know better and frankly, he was the stupid one to think that he didn't know all along.

They, the six of them, always held their parties out by the train track. They always parked their cars in a circle enclosing them in from the outside world like six grand walls of secrecy. As if they needed to be secretive about it. The Gallows Train Crossing was anything but open. It was dark, hidden by a thick forest bordering town and the fact that a train hadn't crossed those tracks in five years left it virtually free to do whatever really. Yet even with all this detachment from the real world, he knew they probably weren't the first to party there either for there still remained old beer bottles and metal flasks from previous years.

He always found it sad to think how they thought they'd get out of this town. They all had dreams to get away, to go and do their part in the world. And he killed that dream. He massacred any shred of hope they had once held on to. And every night he raised his bottle to that, a mocking cheer to the life he has lead from then on out.

He was the Valedictorian. Now, look at him, just some heartless drunk with nothing to live for but the memory of his transgressions. He had killed future engineers, doctors, teachers, business-people. He had taken the best from ever meeting this world and instead offered them a nice cold place six feet down in the Reynald cemetery. They never deserved that, if anyone did, it was him for being the coward that he was and always will be.

He was pathetic, meaningless, wretched...

There wasn't supposed to be any train that night. It was supposed to be like every other night, late night drinking with friends.

They say when you die you see some light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks to him, the only light they saw was the headlights from an oncoming train. They weren't supposed to see that light; not yet, not then, not that light.

When he hasn't had enough to drink, he can still hear her scream and the ever sharp shriek of metal as it cut through her body and pinned her against the car, his car.

The funeral was announced last week for today, he just can't show his face. So instead, here he is, wallowing in his grief, drinking the last of his drunken father's alcohol, eager for another escape, eager to see those lights.

He must have fallen asleep, sooner or later, because he woke up in a dark, cold somewhere that only seemed possible in his imaginings.

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